


but I still haven't found what I'm looking for

by verity



Series: mixtape [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aliens, Environmentalism, Friendship, M/M, Occupy Wall Street, Saving the World, Sea Monsters, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:23:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2104332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you planning to launch some kind of alternative energy initiative?" Tony says the next time Steve sees him. That takes Steve a few seconds to process because he's busy punching an alien in the face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but I still haven't found what I'm looking for

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_rocket_frost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_rocket_frost/gifts).



> this fic is 9000% Ashe's fault. Ashe and Meg enabled. Special thanks to peardita for her immense insight into characterization, peak oil, and MCU details.
> 
> K-Stars are the currency of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.
> 
> content notes: some ableist language, mild alien and sea monster gore

Steve gets there around dawn, when it's still a little chilly. He's wearing a sweater, jeans, glasses, sneakers. The cops at the perimeter give him a suspicious look, but they're giving everyone entering the park suspicious looks. He heads toward the big red sculpture where a group of people are milling around. Most of them are in jackets or hooded sweatshirts, layered for the weather, which is cool now but is supposed to warm up as the day goes on. As he approaches, a woman hands him a flyer for a lecture on wind energy. Steve thanks her, folds the flyer into quarters and then over again, stuffs it into his pocket. As he gets closer to the sculpture, he can see what everyone is clustered around: a heavyset man with two huge bags slung over his shoulders, pouring out cups of coffee from a cardboard box.

"Get it while it's hot!" he shouts. "Every Starbucks south of Houston is pissed at me and I did it all for you crazy kids."

"Fuck Starbucks," says the dreadlocked white kid at the front of the crowd, but he takes a cup anyway. A woman in a parka shouts, "UNIONIZE STARBUCKS." Someone else is passing around sugar, creamer. There are signs everywhere: no tables, no tents, no generators.

The woman who takes the next cup just says, "Thanks, Tim." Steve's close enough now that he can see she's wearing a priest's collar clipped into a black button-down that shades into her dark skin in the dim light.

Tim says, "Anything for you and the revolution, Mother May. Next!"

Mother May drifts around the crowd while Tim pours out drinks, the two of them working in easy counterpoint like old companions. Men and women greet each other like old friends, embracing, kisses on the cheek. This is a reunion as much as it is a call to renewed action; the people who are here this early are mostly the faithful few, not the newcomers who will straggle in as the day goes on. Steve holds back, hands in his pockets. He was just out of the ice when Zuccotti Park was occupied, trying to find his place in his team, in SHIELD, fighting aliens. Saving the world.

"Peak oil is here!" a woman in a long fleece poncho says, passing Steve another flyer. "Come meet with us on Friday to learn more and what you can do!"

"Sammy!" Mother May says, holding out her arms for a hug. The two women embrace, Sammy's bright curls stark against Mother May's formal garb. "How've you been?"

A lanky man in a heavy sweater whistles to get their attention and shouts. "Everybody remember how to do the human microphone? Say 'ECONOMIC JUSTICE FOR ALL' if you do!"

"ECONOMIC JUSTICE FOR ALL!" the crowd echoes back in resounding waves that overlap each other. There are only a few dozen here, but together they sound louder, stronger. Steve chimes in at the end, letting his voice elide into the collective murmur as the response dies down. Mother May turns away from Sammy toward him, and says, "Now, who might you be?"

"Steve," he says, holding out his hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Steve," Mother May says. "I'm Reverend May from Trinity down the block. You new to the neighborhood?"

"You could say that," says Steve.

—

"You got arrested for sitting next to a table?" Bucky says. "Who the fuck gets arrested for sitting next to a table?"

"I said it was mine," Steve says. "I didn't want to get anybody in trouble."

Bucky inhales, sharply, rubs his hand over his face. "You got _yourself_ in trouble."

The last time Steve saw Bucky, it was coming out of Tony's office. In combat, Steve was the leader of the Avengers, but Tony was the one you went to for tech, for information, for supplies. For money, if you needed it. Bucky looked pale and sallow, still, said, "Steve," as he passed, headed straight to the elevator. They were forty floors up, but Steve usually took the stairs.

Now Bucky looks—normal. He's wearing casual, light clothes, he's shaved, his hair is cropped short. If you didn't look too closely at the his gloved hand, he could pass as someone who commutes in from Jersey with the computer bag he's got slung over his chest. A computer bag that looks suspicious empty. "Did you pay in cash?" Steve says.

Bucky shrugs like 25 grand in cash is nothing to just have on hand.

"Why the fuck would you pay the bail in cash, Buck?" Steve says, tensing. "Why would you do that?"

Bucky says, "You can't punch me here. We're in a police station."

—

Steve works out a lot. Goes down to DC to hang out with Sam when Sam isn't avenging, but Sam has the VA and his family and a life. Sometimes Natasha shows up and makes Steve come with her to get mani-pedis. Getting all the rough skin buffed off his feet is really soothing, and he likes having his hands submerged in warm paraffin wax. The mani-pedis cost twice as much as Steve used to pay in rent for a month. Steve doesn't pay rent now. He lives in one of Tony's buildings.

"Just think of me as your Daddy Warbucks," Tony says whenever Steve brings it up. "Wait, were you around for that? Were you a popsicle?"

"Daddy Warbucks died of despair when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected," Steve says flatly. "They brought him back for the film."

Tony grins and shoots him finger guns. "Gotcha."

Steve goes to the peak oil meeting on Friday, which is at City College all the way up in Harlem. The woman who handed out the flyers is there, and so is Sammy, her red hair pulled back in a ponytail. She makes a beeline toward him where he's sitting in the back of the big NAC lecture hall, leans down to whisper, "Are you really Captain America?"

"Right now, I'm just Steve Rogers," Steve says.

Sammy raises her eyebrows, but leaves him be, making her way to the front where a young woman is setting up the microphone at the podium. The room fills up slowly; there are still stragglers trickling in and filling creaking seats when the lights dim. A short, elderly woman plunks down next to Steve and fumbles with the volume on her hearing aids before she pulls a thick steno book out of her purse, setting it on the long table in front of them. After a moment, she glances over at Steve. "Aren't you taking notes, young man?"

Steve used to carry a notebook around all the time, but these days, he doesn't have as much stuff to catch up on. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't come prepared." Steve pulls out the crumpled flier from his pocket, which is blank on the back, but he doesn't have anything to write with. The woman next to him _tsks_ and tears off a few sheets of lined paper for him, passes him a ballpoint pen.

"TESTING, TESTING," says the grey-haired man at the podium with Sammy. "Testing—oh, there we are. And can we bring up the projector?" A blue rectangle appears onto the screen next to him; the words PEAK OIL: THE PLATEAU are in bold white text outlined in black. "Excellent. Hello, I'm Dr. Lee Sungwoo, Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science at City College, and this is Samantha Cowell, who will be our ASL translator tonight. Transcripts of the talk will be available online after the meeting."

Steve's neighbor is already beginning to scribble down notes in cramped shorthand. Hastily, he follows suit.

—

"Are you planning to launch some kind of alternative energy initiative?" Tony says the next time Steve sees him. That takes Steve a few seconds to process because he's busy punching an alien in the face.

Rhodes flies past them in his War Machine suit, alien viscera trailing from his legs and burning a virulent orange in the flame of the repulsors on his feet. A few buildings over, Clint is picking some of the ones with tentacles out of the sky with flaming arrows; Natasha is slinging her way towards Steve and Tony with some kind of projectile webbing that probably came from Peter Parker. Or maybe she stole it from the aliens. It's hard to guess with Natasha.

"On your left, Rogers!" Sam yells as he whizzes by, and Steve turns his head just in time to see the Hulk leap over their heads and pounce on the auxiliary warship with a booming cry.

Steve sighs. "I thought we were trying to minimize civilian damage." He punches another alien in the face. It's one of the gooey ones; his fist goes right through like he's shoving his hand through a sheet of green Jell-O. He makes sure to grab the laser rifle out of its hands, though; they keep waddling around for a few minutes after their brains ooze out, like beheaded chickens.

Thunder cracks through the air and the main ship shudders over the Hudson. "I will protect your people, Captain!" Thor shouts. "Your people, your hallowed buildings, and the tunnels of your transport to Newer Jersey!"

"NJT? Really?" Tony blasts an alien off its flying scooter. "That's what you took away from Hill's lecture?"

The alien wobbles off Steve's fist and then over the edge of the skyscraper. Steve takes out a couple more with the laser rifle and says, "I'm concerned about our reliance on fossil fuels and other limited resources like natural gasses." He grabs another laser rifle as it plummets from the sky and tosses it to Natasha as she detaches a web from the sleeve of her cat-suit.

Rifles continue to drop around them as Clint picks off the tentacle guys above; they're each carrying three. Tony says, "God, this is like the NRA's wet dream," before he shoots off toward the mothership like the self-sacrificing idiot that he is.

"Come on," Natasha says, holding out her arm and nodding toward where the Hulk is punching the shit out of the other ship. "Let's go save Manhattan Bridge."

—

The table Steve got arrested for holding for a friend belonged to Matt Ramirez. He brought it collapsed in a hiking backpack, the legs telescoped into each other and collapsed into the cloth top. "It's a camping table," Matt said as he locked the struts into place. "They need some place to put the projector. You mind watching it for me?"

Steve doesn't know what happened to the table, or the projector. He didn't resist arrest. If the officers were paying attention to him, they weren't bugging Vince in his wheelchair or Anna and her kid. He watched them cuff Mother May at the front of the crowd, her END DISCRIMINATION / END WAGE DISPARITY sign disappearing into the crush of bodies. Mother May was on CNN the next day, so she's okay. No one else he recognized got carted off along with him.

The protest is on TV for a few days; then it disappears into debate about climate change and single-payer healthcare and other things Steve doesn't understand why there's any debate about. He stops watching TV when he realize he's got it on all the time, the way Ma used to leave on the radio.

Then Bucky shows up in his apartment in the middle of the night.

—

Steve wakes up with an imprint of Bucky's metal arm on his cheek; Bucky startles when someone's car alarm goes off and he kicks Steve in the shins. There's an awkward interlude while Steve makes them coffee in the single-cup coffee maker that Tony gave him after Bucky moved out. He puts in a pod of Eight O'Clock Original, same as he used to get ground fresh at the A&P before the war. It's better than the Folgers in the freezer.

Bucky rummages through the fridge, moving aside a couple of takeout containers to dig the quart of milk out of the back of the fridge. The carton sloshes ominously. "This expired last month."

Steve says, "Not going through much milk on my own."

He's not sure what reaction he's waiting for, but whatever it is, it doesn't come. Instead, Bucky steps over to the counter where the sugar bowl is. "When's your court date?" He dumps in two tablespoons of sugar.

"You sure you don't want the whole bowl?" Steve says.

"This is not my caramel mocha," Bucky says, stirring. "I'm making do."

The motion layers Bucky on top of Bucky on top of Bucky on top of Bucky: Bucky at the stove heating up tinned soup, Bucky digging into a C ration, Bucky dragging a spoon through a bowl of microwave oatmeal, Bucky doctoring his coffee. This Bucky is drinking out of the purple mug with the ridges on the side that make it easier to grip. He's lost muscle mass, which isn't good; the doctors said he needs to keep in shape to support the weight of his metal arm. Steve opens his mouth, shuts it again. Drinks his coffee and waits for Bucky to leave.

—

The next meeting Steve goes to is in Prospect Park. He thought it would be big and formal, like the lecture, but instead it's just a bunch of people spread out over picnic blankets, enjoying the late afternoon sun. Someone has leaned a sign against the cooler Matt Ramirez is sitting on: ENDING OUR FOOD DESERT—SOLUTIONS AND CHALLENGES. "Hey, man," Matt says when he sees Steve, ambling over to pat him on the back. "That was a stand-up thing you did in the park last month."

Steve shuffles his feet. "Was the projector okay?"

"Vince got it out in his wheelchair," Matt says. "You in the neighborhood, then?"

"On the other side of the park," Steve says. "I saw the flyer in my bodega."

Matt grins. "Awesome. Welcome to the party. We've got Jimmy from City Harvest, Lindsey from Veggie Van, and a bunch of people who want to feed people. You in?"

Steve says, "I want to help."

—

The next time Sam's up from DC for the weekend, they head over to Clint's neighborhood to grab some of the finest pizza in Brooklyn. Before they've even looked at the menu, though, the dishes on their table start to rattle as the ground quakes with the pulse of a massive vibration. "This is in violation of the brotime code," Sam says. "I'm gonna punch this sucker in the nose extra hard, man."

"You do that," says Steve as he throws a handful of cash down on the table and shoots an apologetic glance at their would-be server.

Twenty minutes, Sam, Steve, and Clint are battling it out in an alley with Klaw, whose sonic pulses have put Clint's hearing aids out for the count. Steve's on the ground giving him cover while Sam blasts the shit out of Klaw with two semi-automatics like an avenging angel. Clint shoots a noise-canceling arrow at the base of the guy's skull and then he's out, plummeting to the ground and landing in a overflowing dumpster. "Aw, free bagels, no," Clint says.

Sam descends, wings folding down into his backpack when he lands at Steve's side. "Do you know how to sign 'dumpster diving'? I need Clint to know I approve of his priorities."

Clint holds up a gloved hand for a high-five. "Hey, I can read lips."

There's a low groan from the dumpster.

"Jesus," Sam says. "Does this asshole respawn?"

Steve picks up the shield and slings it onto his back. The only thing that makes this guy's energy form collapse is vibranium. "I'm going to deal with cleanup," he says. "Clint, you good with Sam?"

"I led an uprising against the Russian mob like this, I'm fine," Clint says loudly.

Sam says, "The Russian mob?"

In the dumpster, Klaw is twitching, hands scrabbling at the arrow in the back of his skull, but it's in too deep; he can't get it loose. This guy isn't HYDRA, just some garden variety scientist overloaded with his own ego, squirming like a bug on a pin. Steve can't help but think of Bucky, fighting in the helicarrier, eyes wild and pathetic. He sighs and raises his shield.

—

The next time Steve sees Bucky, it's in the bodega around the corner at 2AM. They only live two blocks apart, but by tacit agreement Steve conceded this bodega months ago in favor of the one a block farther. Bucky is holding a bag of Fritos and a glass bottle of Coke when they meet at the register. Steve has an overpriced roll of paper towels.

"I'm sorry," he says to Bucky, letting him go first in line.

Bucky shrugs. "You know, that stuff is cheaper if you buy it in bulk."

The disinterested cashier rings up the chips and soda, shoves them toward Bucky in a thin plastic bag. Bucky waits for Steve to check out and Steves lets Bucky lead them out the door. "I knocked over a glass," Steve says. "There wasn't enough—"

"Hey," Bucky says. "You don't have to explain yourself to me."

Steve says, "Yes, I do."

They're paused at the corner where their paths diverge, Steve cradling his paper towels and Bucky twisting the handles of the bag in his hand. The motion is so familiar, natural, that it takes Steve a moment to remember that's Bucky's metal arm, that he can't feel the way the plastic twines and tightens around his fingers. Abruptly, Bucky says, "I couldn't sleep. I still—dream."

"Me, too," Steve says.

Bucky gives him that achingly familiar smile and says, "Goodnight."

—

The next time the Avengers converge, it's for their monthly meeting. Rhodes is down at the Pentagon, Thor is Skyping in from Asgard, and Sam is calling from DC, but they're more or less assembled in Tony's gleaming board room. "Good afternoon, lady and gentleman," Tony says, pulling out the chair at the head of the table for Steve. "Can we start out with the budget for October?"

Natasha smiles. "Please do. I'm looking forward to the explanation of the line item for Kim Kardashian: Hollywood."

Sam snorts over speakerphone. "Unlike _some_ people on this team, I have gotten to B-list status without spending a dime."

"I'd like to go over the damage reports from the alien invasion first," Steve says loudly. No one is paying attention. Bruce is leaning forward in his chair, suspiciously alert; Thor is frowning; Clint is fiddling with his phone, so probably recording this conversation for posterity.

"I do not have access to American money on Asgard," Thor says. "Nor do I have time to earn sufficient K-Stars."

"You can't just _expense_ K-Stars," Sam says.

Calmly, Bruce adds, "I paid out of pocket for mine. And the expansion pack."

"God knows we wouldn't want Tony to foot the budget for _that_ ," Steve says.

Heads guiltily swivel.

"We have to stop breaking stuff." Steve spreads his hands. "Stuff that people use. Not just transit, parks, Radio City Music Hall—"

"There's a line item in the budget for that," Tony says.

Steve says, "I will pay for everyone to play Kim Kardashian: Hollywood if we can just leave New York City the hell alone."

"What about Hoboken?" Tony says.

When Steve shuts his eyes, all he can see is Manhattan crumbling under assault from above, the collapsing weight of SHIELD headquarters, the wreckage of Bucky's arm under his own hands. New York's not enough. America's not enough. "We're superheroes," Steve says. "In case you missed that day of class, we're supposed to be _saving_ the _world_."

There's a long pause. Thor clears his throat; someone taps their pen against the table. Sam huffs into the speaker, steadily enough that he's probably jogging during their top-secret conference call.

"Point taken," Natasha says after a minute. "I would like to move on to the line item for gear, if we may."

Steve takes a deep breath. "Clint, we upped your allowance for arrows."

" _Finally_ ," says Clint.

—

"I guess this is progress," Steve says. He still has the gun that lives under his pillow clutched in his hand; his back is breaking out in cold sweat.

Bucky's hands are loose and empty at his sides, but that doesn't mean he's unarmed. "I made noise," he says. "I used the front door."

The clock on the nightstand says it's 3AM. Steve laid in bed for two hours before he fell asleep; he doesn't know how he's going to get back to bed after this. "What's wrong?"

Bucky shrugs. "Nothing. The light in your living room's still on."

Steve leans across the bed toward the little nightstand with the reading lamp crammed on it; Bucky gets there first. Their hands meet on the switch as the room fills with light from the corkscrewed bulb. Steve has to blink for a moment until his eyes adjust, which is long enough for Bucky to draw back, arms folded against his body, compact and composed again. Steve says, "Did you have trouble sleeping?"

"Sometimes I remember things," Bucky says. "When it's late, when it's quiet. Don't you?"

Steve says, "Funny how you remember when it's convenient for you."

Bucky leans back against the door jamb. "You had me worried for a moment. Steve Rogers, all concerned for poor little Bucky Barnes. No, you just want—"

"You _died_ ," Steve says.

"See, that's the problem," Bucky says. "Neither of us did."

Steve reaches over again and turns off the lamp. In the dark, Bucky's just a slightly deeper shadow; the glare of the street light doesn't reach far enough to glint off his arm. Steve's alarm clock ticks from one second to the next.

After a while, Bucky says, "I had cooking class tonight. We made Julia Child's beef bourguignon. Apparently, I have excellent knife skills."

Steve groans.

Bucky says, "Too soon?"

—

Steve takes the A all the way out past JFK to do beach cleanup with the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance. It's a blustery October day, so he's wrapped up in a sweater and waterproof parka, jeans already wet from getting down to dig stuff out of the sand. Nancy, his partner, is wearing orange rain boots that go up to the knee and a thick peacoat in virulent green. Together, they're dragging a big bag already half-filled with aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and other sundry debris of humanity. Steve coaxes a crumpled twist of styrofoam out of a mess of seaweed and tosses it into the bag while Nancy excavates an abandoned beach pail with nitrile-gloved hands. "I can't believe people just leave this shit in the park," she says. "Or wherever. Most of this washes up here after the kids at Coney Island get done with it."

There wasn't recycling when he was growing up, but they didn't package things like this, either. Steve says, "It's a shame."

Nancy snorts. "I'm just waiting for an army of mutant sharks to show up on land decked out in water wings and demanding more Dr Pepper."

Steve crouches down to get a better grip on the plastic webbing that's waving in the surf. He's just gotten a good grip on it when a giant beast surges out of the ocean in front of them, shaking the water off its mottled flesh like a dog coming in from the rain. It tilts back its head, scales glistening in the late afternoon soon, and lets out a bone-trembling roar.

"See," Nancy says. "This is _exactly_ what I'm talking about."

Someone further down on the beach screams; Steve's phone starts vibrating in his back pocket. He gets about two minutes to start hustling people back from the shore before Thor swoops down from the sky, hammer in hand. "Captain, your presence is requested."

Steve sighs.

—

"Godzilla incoming, Falcon," Rhodes says into the comm tucked into Steve's ear. The Avengers with flying capability are directly engaging from above while the Hulk steadily advances up the monster's tail.

Sam neatly dodges a claw. "I don't know, man. These look more like the fuckers from that robot team movie."

Steve and Clint are up in the helicopter that Natasha is piloting, because Natasha knows how to do everything and Steve vetoed stealing a boat. Clint's new arrows explode and then the fragments explode again, but they seem to be pissing the monster off more than damaging it.

"If this is Godzilla, we're all be fucked." Tony blasts his repulsors up the monster's nostrils as it looms over Thor. "I don't have enough cadmium in this country."

The Hulk bellows, "GOJIRA," and smashes his fist against the base of the monster's tail before he sinks his teeth into its spine.

"Man, I can't tell whether or not he's arguing with us about movies again." Clint notches another arrow. "The Hulk can be kind of pedantic."

"The original is always better," Natasha says. "Except for _Ocean's Eleven_."

Steve adjusts the rocket launcher on his shoulder, lining up a shot to the heart. "I don't know, Nat. I kinda liked the new _King Kong_."

Before he can fire, Thor hurtles his hammer into the monster's ear. Mjolnir flies out the other side with a sickening burst of brain matter that splatters across the churning waves and onto the sand beyond.

Clint says, "So much for your clean beach."

—

The next time Bucky shows up, Steve is in the middle of making dinner, so on the phone with the Chinese place down the street. "One General Tso's platter," Steve says, "Beef fried rice—"

"Kung Pao beef," Bucky says as he unlocks the front door.

Steve raises his eyebrows. "Kung Pao beef. And spring rolls."

While they wait, Steve does some of the dishes cluttering the sink: plates, a frying pan, the empty pickle jar he uses to save bacon fat. Bucky rearranges the mishmash of word magnets on the fridge from Nat's insults to a string of inscrutable fragments: _tired sky_ , _how truth_ , _idolatrous banana_. Then he peers at the stack of cookbooks on top of the fridge. "You have _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_?"

"Peggy used to play bridge with Julia Child," Steve says. "The Rachael Ray one is mine."

"I like _30 Minute Meals_ ," Bucky says. Then: "What? I watch TV."

"I'm sure you make time in your busy schedule," Steve says lightly.

Bucky hauls himself up on the counter, perching next to the drying rack. "Mostly I go to therapy and watch Netflix. You're not missing out."

"Don't tell me what I'm missing," Steve says.

When Bucky reaches out and strokes the line of Steve's jaw with a cool, metal finger, his touch is gentle. "Pass me a rag," he says as he pulls back. "I'll dry the dishes."

—

The next time Steve sees Tim the coffee guy, Steve is sitting in the second row from the stage for a panel on renewable energy, wearing one of those ridiculous t-shirts with his shield on it. No hiding in the back anymore. "Well, well, well," Tim says as he comes up to Steve. "You here to save us, Captain America?"

"No," Steve says, setting his notebook on the table in front of him. "I'm here to learn."

**Author's Note:**

> All of the people depicted in this story are fictitious, but several of the organizations I mention are real, including [City Harvest](http://www.cityharvest.org/), [Veggie Van](http://www.cnpnc.org/index.php/veggie-van), and [Rockaway Waterfront Alliance](http://www.rwalliance.org/rwa/).
> 
> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
